5 Weeks for a 5K!

Young Family

If you're a facebook friend of mine, you may have seen some posts the last couple of months about the Young family. Holland Young is only 3 years old and last year as her family found out they were having their second baby, Holland started having bad headaches and throwing up. They found out she had brain tumors. At her young age, she has already had 5 surgeries to fight her cancer. After the last one they started her on chemotherapy. All of these procedures have ran up bills and have been tough for this young family to handle. A friend of the family organized a 5K to help raise money to help. Holland's dad is a friend of mine from grad school and work, so I was happy to sign up.

The problem: I am super out of shape. Last summer I seriously tried to lose weight, but it wasn't working. I found out later that I had been pregnant at the time. I had a miscarriage which seriously messed with my hormones. I've gotten all of that back on the right track, but doing so hasn't been so good for the weight loss challenge. I see this 5K as an opportunity to help a friend and try to kick-start my fight against weight again with a level of seriousness that hasn't been there for a few years.

I told myself that in 5 weeks I was going to be able to walk that 5K without looking ridiculous. This goal may seem vague, but the other day I walked only a mile with my brother...and I looked ridiculous. So I have 5 weeks to turn this around. I told myself to start slow and master the mile again. I've never been a good runner. My knees have been against me since middle school and let's tell the truth, I was in Adaptive P.E. when I was a kid because I showed slight delays in my gross motor skills. A few years ago I lost a lot of weight and was able to get my mile run down to 11 minutes. Now by a good runner's standard, that's not super impressive, but for me it was good enough. I used to be able to run/jog/walk 8 miles on the beach in San Diego just 4 years ago when I could run the 11 minute mile. So, I'm going to start with the mile. I'm giving myself 2 weeks to work on the mile, then 2 weeks to work on 2 miles and then the last week I will tackle 3 miles in preparation for the 5K.  

I started today by going to the gym and I walked my mile. It took me 23 minutes with 11:30 being the half mile. I'm going to slowly get that time down and report on this blog how I'm doing. Go 5 weeks for the 5K!!!

If you live in or around the Utah County area and are interested in joining the Hope for Holland 5k, here is the link for the facebook event page:

https://www.facebook.com/events/150066688488115/

and the link to register if you're not a facebooker:

http://runnercard.com/e/runner.Main?meet=4612